Every year,
the global leather industry slaughters more than a billion animals and tans
their skins and hides.1 Many animals from whom these skins are
taken suffer all the horrors of factory farming, including extreme crowding
and confinement, deprivation, unanesthetized castration, branding,
tail-docking, dehorning, and cruel treatment during transport and finally, slaughter.

The multibillion-dollar meat industry profits from more than just the
animals’ flesh. The byproducts of meat consumption include fats and blood
that are used in livestock feed, tires, explosives, paints, and cosmetics;
organs that are used in pet food; and heart valves that are used in the
pharmaceutical industry.2,3 The skin of the animal, however,
represents “the most economically important byproduct of the meat packing
industry.”4

When dairy cows’ production declines, their skin is also made into leather;
the hides of their offspring, “veal” calves, are made into high-priced
calfskin. Thus, the economic success of the slaughterhouse and the dairy farm
is directly linked to the sale of leather goods.

Other Animals Slaughtered for Skins
Most leather produced and sold in the United States is made from the skins of
cattle and calves, but leather is also made from horses, sheep, lambs, goats,
and pigs who are slaughtered for meat. Other species are hunted and killed
specifically for their skins, including zebras, bison, water buffaloes, boars,
kangaroos, elephants, eels, sharks, dolphins, seals, walruses, frogs, turtles,
crocodiles, lizards, and snakes.

Other “exotic” animals, such as alligators, are factory-farmed for their
skins and meat. Young alligators may be kept in tanks above ground, while the
bigger animals live in pools half-sunken into concrete slabs.5
According to Florida’s regulations, as many as 350 6-foot alligators may
legally inhabit a space the size of a typical family home.6 One
Georgia farmer had 10,000 alligators living in four buildings, where
“hundreds and hundreds of alligators fill every inch of [each] room,”
according to the Los Angeles Times.7 Although alligators
may naturally live up to 60 years, on farms they are usually butchered before
the age of 2, as soon as they reach 4 to 6 feet in length.8,9
Humane treatment is not a priority of those who poach and hunt animals to
obtain their skin or those who transform skin into leather. Alligators on
farms may be beaten to death with hammers and axes, sometimes remaining
conscious and in agony for up to two hours after being skinned.10

Kangaroos are slaughtered by the millions every year, their skins considered
to be prime material for soccer shoes.11,12 Although the Australian
government requires hunters to shoot the animals, orphaned joeys and wounded
adults are, according to government code, to be decapitated or hit sharply on
the head “to destroy the brain.”13 Snakes and lizards may be
skinned alive because of the belief that live flaying imparts suppleness to
the finished leather. Kid goats may be boiled alive to make kid gloves, and
the skins of unborn calves and lambs—some purposely aborted, others from
slaughtered pregnant cows and ewes—are considered especially
“luxurious.”

Shearling, contrary to what many consumers think, is not sheared wool; the
term refers to a yearling sheep who has been shorn once. A shearling garment
is made from a sheep or lamb shorn shortly before slaughter; the skin is
tanned with the wool still on it.

Animals used to produce leather in other countries often suffer horribly as
well. A investigation into cattle slaughter in
India
, where many mistakenly believe that cows are revered, revealed that old cows
are sold at auction and then marched long distances to illegal transport
trucks. Often sick and injured from the grueling march, as many as 50 cattle
are crammed into trucks designed to hold no more than a dozen animals. They
are then driven over rutted roads, all the while goring and trampling each
other, to ancient slaughterhouses where all four feet are bound together and
their throats are slit.

Hundreds of thousands of dog and cat skins are traded in Europe each year
(with an estimated 2 million killed in China to meet the demand), but many are
bought unknowingly by consumers since the products made from dog and cat fur
are often mislabeled and do not accurately indicate their origin.14
In France, more than 20,000 cats are stolen for the skin trade annually;
during a police raid on a tannery in Deux-Sèvres, 1,500 skins, used to make
baby shoes, were seized.15 When you buy leather products, you may
unknowingly be purchasing leather from dog and cat tanneries.

Tannery Toxins
Although leathermakers like to tout their products as “biodegradable” and
“eco-friendly,” the process of tanning stabilizes the collagen or protein
fibers so that they actually stop biodegrading.

Until the late 1800s, animal skin was air- or salt-dried and tanned with
vegetable tannins or oil, but today animal skin is turned into finished
leather with a variety of much more dangerous substances, including mineral
salts, formaldehyde, coal-tar derivatives, and various oils, dyes, and
finishes, some of them cyanide-based.

Most leather produced in the
U.S.
is chrome-tanned. All wastes containing chromium are considered hazardous by
the Environmental Protection Agency. In addition to the toxic substances
mentioned above, tannery effluent also contains large amounts of other
pollutants, such as protein, hair, salt, lime sludge, sulfides, and acids.

Among the disastrous consequences of this noxious waste is the threat to human
health from the highly elevated levels of lead, cyanide, and formaldehyde in
the groundwater near tanneries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
found that the incidence of leukemia among residents in an area surrounding
one tannery in
Kentucky
was five times the national average.16 Arsenic, a common tannery
chemical, has long been associated with lung cancer in workers who are exposed
to it on a regular basis. Several studies have established links between sinus
and lung cancers and the chromium used in tanning.17 Studies of
leather-tannery workers in
Sweden
and
Italy
found cancer risks “between 20% and 50% above [those] expected.”18

Raising animals whose skins eventually become leather creates waste and
pollution. Huge amounts of fossil fuels are consumed in livestock production.
(By contrast, plastic wearables account for only a fraction of the petroleum
used in the
U.S.
) Trees are cleared to create pastureland, vast quantities of water are used,
and feedlot and dairy-farm runoff are a major source of water pollution.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, tanneries have largely
shifted operations worldwide from developed to undeveloped nations, where
labor is cheap and environmental regulations are lax.19

Alternatives
There are many alternatives to leather, including cotton, linen, rubber,
ramie, canvas, and synthetics. Chlorenol (called “Hydrolite” by Avia and
“Durabuck” by Nike), used in athletic and hiking shoes, is an exciting new
material that’s perforated for breatheability, stretches around the foot
with the same “give” as leather, gives good support, and is
machine-washable.

Vegan shoes and accessories are inexpensive, and some are even made from
recycled materials.